Though the new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth like the old.
G. J. Whyte-Melville.
The title evidently refers to Horace Ep. 1, 2, 69, 70, Quo semel est Imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu. “The scent which once has flavoured the fresh jar will be preserved in it for many a day.” Moore no doubt had the same passage in his mind when, speaking of the memories of past joys, he wrote:
You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
So Whyte-Melville says that when love is poured again into the heart of a man who has lost his first love, “The new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old.”
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: